Whats it all about
The MoE instructed N4L to manage a process of tendering for provider or providers to replace the end of wire devices (switches and Access points), N4L opted for a single provider to provide switches and WiFi. The good news is this was won by Ruckus (A company NORRCOM and PureTech have been partners with for 10 years).
As with SNUP and WSNUP, this program has a time-frame and logically the schools that received WiFi first all those years ago will be on the whole upgraded first. See the boxes below for more detail.
Whats it all about
The MoE instructed N4L to manage a process of tendering for provider or providers to replace the end of wire devices (switches and Access points), N4L opted for a single provider to provide switches and WiFi. The good news is this was won by Ruckus (A company NORRCOM and PureTech have been partners with for 10 years).
As with SNUP and WSNUP, this program has a time-frame and logically the schools that received WiFi first all those years ago will be on the whole upgraded first. See the boxes below for more detail.
DIFFERENCE
As technology moves forward systems change, for all of those schools who had Ruckus you had an onsite controller, this will now be housed in a cloud server managed by N4L. The team at N4L and MoE are attempting to integrate all WiFi across all schools providing a local network for you and national education WiFi network, it is a challenging project but some of the countries best network people are on the project.
WHEN
A hard one to call and to be fair to MoE if you were due in 3 years you would complain to get bumped up. As the year ahead list gets announced you will be contacted by N4L, they will engage your ICT provider if you have one, if you dont one from a panel who support your region will be assigned.
COST
The cost is per student per month and when compared with the true cost of the equipment is a lot less. N4L will insist you sign a document allowing them access to systems and services to enable the integration of the national network.
DIFFERENCE
As technology moves forward systems change, for all of those schools who had Ruckus you had an onsite controller, this will now be housed in a cloud server managed by N4L. The team at N4L and MoE are attempting to integrate all WiFi across all schools providing a local network for you and national education WiFi network, it is a challenging project but some of the countries best network people are on the project.
WHEN
A hard one to call and to be fair to MoE if you were due in 3 years you would complain to get bumped up. As the year ahead list gets announced you will be contacted by N4L, they will engage your ICT provider if you have one, if you dont one from a panel who support your region will be assigned.
COST
The cost is per student per month and when compared with the true cost of the equipment is a lot less. N4L will insist you sign a document allowing them access to systems and services to enable the integration of the national network.
Comment
The two issues we have as a company and we may be being over protective of our clients is not the issue of a single network for all, this has been on the cards since NORRCOM piloted SSO for the MoE, its who has access to perform these tasks and what documentation is in place to protect the school. it needs to be more open and clearly documented. The end solution is a well thought out idea, we actually believe at NORRCOM there should be a common IDP for all schools as we worked on 10 years ago.
With all large projects you cannot please all of the people all of the time, its impossible but there are a lot of NZ schools without ICT provision, these schools will benefit enormously, there will be a few issues with the larger schools but if you know technology, before it works seamlessly it must be setup.
There are a few other small issues but as weve said its very difficult to roll out something that fits every bodies requirements and ability.
There will be a few schools that cannot wait, it maybe it doesn’t cut the mustard or you are having problems, before spending the money in replacing WiFi, call us we can performed detailed analysis which will be to look at the internet, a WiFi survey or add an access point here or there. There are answers and it wont break the bank.
Comment
There is a lot of money being invested by MoE in keeping schools connected, many schoold WiFi its safe to say struggling under the load. The excellent part of the project is its Ruckus, together with Fortinet as a firewall the school couldn’t be in better hands.
The two issues we have as a company and we may be being over protective of our clients is handing out server credentials to enable a country wide network, NORRCOM have installed similar systems for the MoE and we worked with the local provider, it seems to us to be a good system but not really consulted on, schools will not know this is a requirement.
With all big projects you cannot please all of the people all of the time, its impossible but there are a lot of NZ schools without iCT provision, these schools will benefit enormously, there will be a few issues with the larger schools but if you know technology before it works seamlessly it must be setup.
Those schools that currently have issues with WiFi, call us and we can speak to MoE/N4L on your behalf.